We just finished our summer weeklong MEC meeting. It was a very busy week. During our joint council meeting breakout session for Council 7, we elected Capt. Chris Norman as the interim Block 1 rep. He is finishing the term of Capt. Don Ray, who was elected to be the interim MEC secretary-treasurer. We also counted the nomination ballots for the Council 7 elections for the term starting March 1, 2019. The election will be via electronic balloting, which began August 24 and will conclude September 10. You should have received instructions by mail and e-mail on how to vote electronically. At the conclusion of the block rep elections, there will be another election to choose the chairman, vice chairman, and secretary-treasurer from the three newly elected block reps.

Our collective careers are under direct threat from the FAA Reauthorization Bill. Specifically, from Amendment 744 which directs the FAA to conduct a study of reduced crew in the cockpit, remote piloting, and autonomous operations. If you have not taken the 30 seconds to participate in ALPA’s Call to Action, please do immediately. If your career is important to you, it’s important that you participate.

In case you missed it, the Negotiating Committee published a message last week. In a nutshell, the MEC approved a set of retirement bargaining guidelines and authorized the Negotiating Committee to prepare a retirement opener proposal to be presented to the MEC at our October meeting in anticipation of bargaining with FedEx management. Please see the Negotiating Committee message for more details.

For our crews operating in Europe, please be aware the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has adopted a regulation requiring random alcohol testing of crews as part of ramp inspection programs in the various EASA member states. Each EASA member may have its own standard with respect to a BAC threshold; some EU states have a “zero tolerance” threshold. While random testing has started in some member states, the regulation will not be fully implemented until 2020. Further guidance is being developed. ALPA has urged EASA to recognize the extremely robust U.S. testing program and consider that in its testing prioritization. Nonetheless, the testing is mandatory.

The R&I Committee briefed us on several things. The changeover to Fidelity for our 401(k) plan will occur January 1, 2019. More details will be forwarded to everyone from the R&I Committee as well as the Company. This is a huge win for our pilots. You will be able to keep all your Vanguard funds if you choose to. The customer service, fees, and operating platform are far superior to Vanguard. We were also briefed on a solution to the ALPA-sponsored FDX MEC LTD plan rates. Due to high usage of our plan, the rates more than doubled in 2017. The plan will be moving to an age-banding method of figuring rates. There will not be an increase in premiums, however some age bands will see significant reductions. The younger you are, the cheaper the rates.

Open enrollment this year will be October 18 to November 1. Our health insurance premiums will be going down a bit this year as result of our contractual review process that was codified in CBA 2015.
That’s all for this comm. Please stay engaged and never hesitate to call or e-mail at Donald.Loepke@alpa.org or 901-308-3464. Our FDX ALPA MEC office number is 901-752-8749, please put that in your phones and make us your first call when you have any issues with the Company. Fly safe.